Section 3. Objective - This Act aims to facilitate domestic and international dealings, transactions, arrangements agreements, contracts and exchanges and storage of information through the utilization of electronic, optical and similar medium, mode instrumentality and technology to recognize the authenticity and reliability of electronic data messages or electronic documents related to such activities and to promote the universal use of electronic transactions in the government and by the general public.

Section 4. Sphere of Application - This Act shall apply to any kind of electronic document used in the context of commercial and non-commercial activities to include domestic and international dealings, transactions, arrangements, agreements contracts and exchanges and storage of information.

Section 5. Definition of Terms - For the purposes of this Act, the following terms are defined, as follows:

(a) "Addressee" refers to a person who is intended by the originator to receive the electronic data message or electronic document, but does not include a person acting as an intermediary with respect to that electronic data message or electronic data document. "Computer" refers to any device or apparatus singly or interconnected which, by electronic, electro-mechanical, optical and/or magnetic impulse, or other means with the same function, can receive, record, transmit, store, process, correlate, analyze, projects, retrieve, and/or produce information, data, text, graphics, figures, voice, video, symbols or other modes of expression or perform any one or more of these functions.

(b) "Electronic data message" refers to information generated, sent, received or stored by electronic, optical or similar means.

(c) "Information and Communications System" refers to a system for generating, sending, receiving, storing, or otherwise processing electronic documents and includes the computer system or other similar device by or in which data is recorded or stored and any procedures related to the recording or storage of electronic document.

(d) "Electronic signature" refers to any distinctive mark, characteristic and/or sound in electronic from, representing the identity of a person and attached to or logically associated with the electronic data message or electronic document or any methodology or procedures employed or adopted by a person and executed or adopted by such person with the intention of authenticating or approving an electronic data message or electronic document.

(e) "Electronic document" refers to information or the representation of information, data, figures, symbols or other modes of written expression, described or however represented, by which a right is established or an obligation extinguished, or by which a fact may be prove and affirmed, which is receive, recorded, transmitted, stored, processed, retrieved or produced electronically.

(f) "Electronic key" refers to a secret code which secures and defends sensitive information that crossover public channels into a form decipherable only with a matching electronic key.

(g) "Intermediary" refers to a person who in behalf of another person and with respect to a particular electronic document sends, receives and/or stores provides other services in respect of that electronic data message or electronic document.

(h) "Originator" refers to a person by whom, or on whose behalf, the electronic document purports to have been created, generated and/or sent. The term does not include a person acting as an intermediary with respect to that electronic document.

(i) "Service provider" refers to a provider of-

I. Online services or network access or the operator of facilities therefor including entities offering the transmission, routing, or providing of connections for online communications, digital or otherwise, between or among points specified by a user, of electronic documents of the user's choosing; or

II. The necessary technical means by which electronic documents of an originator may be stored and made accessible to designated or undesignated third party.

Such service providers shall have no authority to modify or alter the content of the electronic document received or to make any entry therein on behalf of the originator, addressee or any third party unless specifically authorized to do so, and who shall retain the electronic document in accordance with the specific request or as necessary for the purpose of performing the services it was engaged to perform.

 

 

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Part I

Republic Acts Table of Contents

Part II Chapter II

 

 

Updated: 09.11.2009 LTO